Where once more than 2,000 men went to work, New Tredegar’s former Elliot Colliery is now the site of a museum and community hub.

We find Donna and Emma Thomas there, in the White Rose Centre café, where they sit all day, just about every weekday.

“Everyone just meets up in here, because there’s nowhere else to go,” says Donna.

“We chat for hours,” adds her 20-year-old daughter Emma.

They paint a picture of personal despair in a town which has found itself in the headlines after the murder of child killer David Gaut, stabbed more than 150 times after people found out his horrific past.

New Tredegar is the place I was born into, when the pits drove the local economy. My memories are of a close community, with freedom to enjoy playing and walking on the mountainsides.

The reports I’ve seen and heard more recently make me wonder what that environment is like now.

What I’ve heard, and been told over the phone, hasn’t been promising.

I’ve heard claims that Caerphilly Council is moving in tenants with major social problems, concentrating them in certain streets, and how drugs, crime and gangs of unruly kids make other people afraid to go out after dark.

As they nurse their drinks in the café, Donna and Emma certainly don’t dispel the negative impressions I’ve already been given.

Emma Thomas and her mother Donna spend just about every weekday at the White Rose centre cafe.

“It’s gone bad,” Donna says, telling me how she wants to move.

“I can remember years ago, it used to be a lovely place. There’s just nothing here at all. I won’t even open my front door after six o’clock.

“You just see people walking up and down the street, we’ve had armed police here around the shops.

“My one boy, he’s got learning difficulties, and he says ‘Mam, there’s people in the garden’, and you see gangs of them.

“Obviously, they’re doing drugs and nothing can be done about it, because they move them on and then they come back in the nights.”

The police and local people I speak to agree David Gaut’s killing by 23-year-old Ieuan Harley was a rare and isolated crime. Two other men, Mr Gaut’s neighbour David Osborne and Darran Evesham, will be sentenced for perverting the course of justice after being cleared of the killing.

Long Row in New Tredegar is the street where David Gaut died

The murder scene, in Long Row, is just across the road from the White Rose Centre and the street is quiet, clean and tidy when I drive into it in the middle of the day.

Gaut would have been the kind of incomer with past crimes I hear locals complaining about, although at the extreme end of the spectrum.

The 54-year-old had been jailed for life in 1985 for murdering a toddler he was babysitting in Caerphilly.

Released on parole after 32 years in prison, he was rehoused in Long Row, with neighbours at first not knowing about his background. He was murdered shortly after neighbours discovered it.

“I don’t think he should have been released and, if he had to be, the council should have warned local residents,” one local woman said after his murder.

The three men now awaiting sentence are also the kind of people giving the town a bleak reputation, with the criminal trial hearing how the trio all had previous convictions for violence.

Ieuan Harley, who killed David Gaut in New Tredegar after Gaut's past as a child killer came to light (Image: Media Wales)

Child killer David Gaut buys train tickets at Caerphilly train station, hours before he was killed by his neighbour in New Tredegar (Image: Gwent Police/PA)

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In common with other former mining communities, the New Tredegar council ward, including Phillipstown and Tirphil, is still blighted by poverty and unemployment.

“Some of the research I’ve done on the area when I’ve been applying for lottery grants, for instance, has highlighted the fact that New Tredegar, and certainly Phillipstown, are in one of the most deprived wards in Wales — things like life expectancy, can people drive, unemployment,” says Gavin Price, who manages the White Rose Centre, a self-funded enterprise for all ages, with a café and library.

New Tredegar isn’t, in fact, ranked highest for deprivation within Caerphilly borough, but the figures aren’t good. Parts of Tirphil and Phillipstown are in the top 4% of the most-deprived communities in Wales.

With its beautiful scenery it’s no surprise, though, that the whole of the New Tredegar area does much better in the rankings for quality of the environment. The figures also indicate there’s better access to services than many parts of Wales.

Gavin Price explains how the White Rose Centre supports people.

“It’s pretty much driven by what the local community want,” he says. “The council run two sessions every week in the centre for young parents.

“They talk about how they handle finance, how they live to a budget, healthy cooking, healthy eating and, probably more importantly, it helps young parents come out into the community and meet friends who are in a similar situation and it improves people who are, I suppose, isolated.”

Doris and Les Lewis have been married 63 years and now live in a retirement complex in New Tredegar

Among the customers in the café that afternoon are Les and Doris Lewis, who’ve been married 63 years. Les is a former miner who worked in Elliot Colliery and the couple have had plenty of time to consider the highs and lows of life in New Tredegar.

I ask them how they’d describe the community.

“What community? The only community we’ve got is here, nowhere else,” Les retorts, referring to the centre he’s sitting in.

“If you go to the pub, you’ve got young people and they’re not the same as when we were young. We were controlled when we were young. There’s no control these days.

“A lot of the people here in New Tredegar are afraid to go out in the dark. Years ago, a woman could walk anywhere and she was safe.”

I consider this from my own experiences. I learned in adulthood that more than 50 years ago someone close to me had been sexually abused by a paedophile neighbour, with domestic violence and child cruelty part of the fabric of life too.

I don’t share this with these long-time residents, but ask Doris how content she is with her lot.

But she bemoans modern life, blaming smartphones, and Les agrees these complaints aren’t specific to his hometown.

“All through the Valleys it has gone the same,” he says. “We were brought up, your next-door neighbour was your friend and the whole street was a friend.

“People had to look after each other years ago, I worked in Elliot and Bedwas [collieries] and I’d do it all over again, it was a wonderful life.”

Christopher Norris is a frequent visitor to the Winding House museum, on the site of the former colliery

As we age, it’s always tempting to look back with a misty fondness. But former local motor mechanic, Christopher Norris, who now lives in Hereford, relates his story of moving to New Tredegar's Farm Terrace in the 1980s.

“It was the worst thing we ever did, absolutely terrible,” he says. “We were burgled 64 times in about three or four months, we had the house set on fire with us in it, front and back of the house at the same time.”

So, serious crime isn’t anything new to the area, I say.

“Yes, but it’s got worse,” he replies and I ask how he can be so sure of that, when he lives many miles away now.

“I’ve got lots of friends living in New Tredegar, really good friends, and hearing things off them all the time and it’s usually bad news off them, it’s very rare you hear good news.

“A lot of good people in Phillipstown and New Tredegar are suffering – they’re afraid to go out of their homes, especially in the night, because there are boys congregating in places.”

Jones Street in the Phillipstown area of New Tredegar is in one of the most deprived parts of Wales

The official deprivation index for Wales does show community safety is an issue, with parts of Tirphil and Phillipstown ranking among the worst 10% in Wales for crime and antisocial behaviour.

We see this played out when stone-throwing youths injure a police officer during an emergency call in Phillipstown, with a fire engine damaged in the same incident as the emergency services came under attack. A crime and safety review prompted by David Gaut’s killing had already begun by then.

New Tredegar's hill and valley environment is valued by those who live in and visit the town

A burned-out store the centre of new Tredegar (Image: Richard Swingler)

Gwent Police and Caerphilly council turn down my request for a verbal interview, sending statements instead. Inspector Andy O’Keefe talks about how police, council and other other agencies work together to tackle issues New Tredegar faces.

However, he maintains: “New Tredegar remains lower in the table of recorded crime compared to many other comparable Valleys towns... my experience is that the fear of crime tends to be higher than actual crime rates and this is true of New Tredegar, particularly in the wake of the high-profile incident in summer 2018.”

Gwent Police figures for 2018 show 698 incidents of crime and antisocial behaviour recorded in New Tredegar, in a population of around 4,750.

But HM Inspectorate of Constabulary has told Gwent Police its crime recording across the force “requires improvement”, finding more than 5,000 crimes a year hadn’t been included in this system throughout the entire area they police.

Nevertheless, more than 36% of the crime recorded in New Tredegar in 2018 was for violence or sexual offences, although Inspector O’Keefe says in his statement, most incidents “were of criminal damage, public order offences and violence without injury”.

“Although these could be termed as ‘low level offences’,” he says. “I recognise they still have a wider impact on public confidence, so together we must continue to target those responsible.”

His statement goes on to talk about a ‘core’ of troublemakers, some thought to be as young as eight, responsible for recent issues.

The kind of things the police have done, he says, include an antisocial behaviour injunction against two youths, a criminal behaviour order being sought against another youth and the appointment of a dedicated police ‘ward manager’ based in New Tredegar itself.

The Tredegar Arms pub and the town's war memorial are among the landmarks in what locals call 'the village'

Meanwhile, many of the local people I speak to during my visit say substance abuse is a major concern and in the Tredegar Arms at the centre of what locals call the ‘village’, Dean Heggie and Kerry Whybeard discuss this.

Dean says drug problems are rife.

“It’s everywhere,” he says, telling me about his 22-year-old son, Justin. “He’s in prison. He’s been in for over a year, he’s been on the drugs. He’ll be out and back on it. It’s just the norm, he’s never going to get a job. What is there for youngsters around here, what is there for older people around here?”

Well, there’s sport for a start.

The town has a bowls club, a sports centre and a rugby club, where Keri Vaughan is a coach.

Keri tells me how the rugby clubhouse is busy these days, especially as other local pubs and clubs have closed down.

“We see all ages from people in their 70s to 18-year-olds, the locals come to our club for the old-time dancing or the quiz nights, that sort of thing,” he says.

Keri Vaughan, coach at New Tredegar RFC says he wouldn't live anywhere else

As a father-of-two, who’s lived in the same street all his life, Keri says New Tredegar isn’t the place he knew growing up.

“It’s a bit of a cliché, you used to know everyone, 20 doors up, but now there’s people from other places coming up,” he adds.

When I ask him about what other people have told me about crime, he replies: “I wouldn’t say it’s more violent.

“I don’t see people off their faces on drugs, but I know there are people close to me who sell the stuff and it’s just rife, the same as everywhere else, and as a small Valleys village, it’s caught up with the times I suppose in that way.

“I’ve got to be honest, we were a bit fearful when my oldest was a bit younger, but she’s 20 now and she’s gone to university and we tried to ground them well.”

At 70, Keri's own former coach Ray Davies remembers New Tredegar in the age of coal and the closeness of those around him.

“There were roughly 25 boys and girls within two years of each other, we played out in the streets until nine o’clock at night, you didn’t hear of all these crimes going on when I was growing up,” he says.

“I used to know most of the people that lived in New Tredegar, I hardly know anybody now.

“When the pits closed, a lot of people moved away to find work and I think as with most Welsh villages, when the pit shut, the village died."

Ray Davies is a founder member of New Tredegar's rugby club

He says the rugby club is doing okay and I remark that he must see active, enthusiastic young people there. He sighs.

“Not enough, really,” he says. “Another fear is, when us older ones die off, who’s going to take up the baton of running the club? I find youngsters don’t want the responsibility.”

When it comes to crime, Ray says he hasn’t been personally affected, but has seen more going on.

“Within the space of four weeks, you had the murder, the post office got broken into and also, four doors up from me, they had a drugs raid, with 12, 13 police cars which we’ve never seen before.

“There are always police cars up and down, helicopters overhead, which obviously we never saw years ago.

“You’ve seen that side of it deteriorating.

“I think a lot of it is that people have no jobs, and that’s throughout Britain, not just in New Tredegar, and I think there’s a lot of strangers here. We’ve seen a big difference in the village and not for the better.”

New Tredegar's rugby club draws people together from all over the community

Looking at employment, or the lack of it, official figures show the proportion of unemployed men in New Tredegar was almost double that of Wales as a whole.

And for both sexes, the geography can present challenges.

Back in the café, hairdresser Emma says she’d been working in a local salon until it shut down last August.

Two jobs she wanted to go for were out of the question because she doesn’t drive and, when we speak, she was now only working on weekends as a security officer 25 miles away in Cardiff, accessible by train.

“You’ve got to look elsewhere, then if you do get elsewhere, you’ve got to travel and get money to travel,” Emma says.

For those who have the means to travel, there’s plenty of employment around, says Keri Vaughan, who works in Merthyr Tydfil building military combat vehicles.

“The majority of my friends or people I know have jobs in Cardiff or Newport, they travel,” he says. “Obviously there’s no jobs locally.

“A lot of my friends are builders or bricklayers, they travel across the bridge or Hereford way, they go where the money is.”

The church run the Living Room cafe, where volunteers Caleb Chandler, Jeannette Vaughan, Derrick Roberts, vicar Leah Philbrick, and Carol Roberts serve the local community

Each street we visit in New Tredegar seems no worse or better than other similar communities in south Wales, and that’s one of the points made in Councillor Eluned Stenner’s statement. She highlights the demise of the coal industry and how the council and other authorities have invested more than £28.6m in recent years to try to regenerate the area, including a new school and children’s centre, road improvements, cycleways, the museum and community hubs.

'We don’t give up hope that things can improve'

An outsider’s view gives a refreshing perspective and comes in the shape of vicar Leah Philbrick, an American who’s been in the community for four and a half years. Before that, she worked in London.

“I know people think a lot has changed in New Tredegar and it’s probably a lot different from how it used to be 20 or 30 years ago, but for someone coming in, you still very much see, actually, it’s retained a lot of that in comparison to other places like London,” she says.

Church volunteers run the Living Room coffee shop, gardening activities and run a weekly food bank in New Tredegar.

“As a church worker, I’m very privileged to be working alongside a lot of people where you see the best in people,” Leah says. “You see people who are wanting to contribute, wanting to support one another, wanting to look after each other, that sort of thing.

“Lots of people recognise that the problems that we have in the community are maybe not uncommon, it’s not unique to where we are and possibly symptomatic of what’s going on in the wider UK.

“It’s just sad when you see it happening in our community. I suppose we try to maintain that sense of hope, we don’t give up hope that things can improve as well.”

Retired lab technician Audrey Cullen paints a similar, more positive picture of modern New Tredegar.

Audrey, who’s 76, is one of the food bank volunteers and has lived in the town since the age of nine. Problems here aren’t any worse than elsewhere, she says, adding weight to what the police have also said.

“It’s fairly quiet, we do get problems, but certainly not as bad as places like Cardiff and Newport,” she says.

“It’s a lot safer, I think, in the Valleys. I know people will cross the road so they won’t have to walk past youngsters, but you walk past them and they’re quite normal... the threat is more imagined than real.”

Audrey Cullen has lived in New Tredegar since she was nine years old

What isn’t in the imagination, she says, is the way people are coping economically and the food bank is vital.

“People are stuggling,” she says. “Universal Credit is now getting blamed for everything, but there have been problems for a long time with people living on benefits.

“To be honest, some people get their benefits and they prefer to drink it rather than eat it, but I think we provide a vital service because there are people with children who are struggling.

“There’s not a lot of work here now, so people have to travel to work.”

But, she’s among those who claim an influx of new tenants can be an issue.

“It has become a bone of contention, we get a lot of people who are put up here in council accommodation and nobody knows who they are and where they’re from,” she says.

“But, I was surprised there was a murder.”

Demand for social housing in New Tredegar is much higher than supply

Caerphilly council’s response to me about the kind of people being rehoused in New Tredegar points to legislation which means it has to give priority to certain groups and eligible applicants can choose which community they’d like to live in. The street and type of home is decided by the council, depending on need.

It’s clear from figures the council publishes that New Tredegar is a popular area among social housing applicants.

“Where applicants have any criminal convictions... we consider the offences in relation to whether they should be excluded from the housing register,” the council’s statement says.

“A blanket exclusion for those with a criminal history is unlawful.

“Only those with a criminal history related to their former housing history can be considered for exclusion and their application is thoroughly explored and considered by a panel of social housing professionals before a decision is made.”

Driving back through the Rhymney Valley from New Tredegar, I come away with mixed impressions, having seen and heard a tale of two towns.

Crime and social problems, unemployment and relative social isolation can, of course, grind people down. But, optimism and friendliness have shone through too, summed up by the local vicar.

“It’s a very resilient community, we keep going,” says the Rev Leah Philbrick. “And I’m very appreciative of the welcome I’ve received, as someone who hasn’t lived here all my life, who comes from a foreign country.”

Keri Vaughan says he wouldn’t live anywhere else: “I’m born and bred here, I love it here to be honest, it’s my community.

“If I won the lottery, I would build a house in New Tredegar rather than move away."